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Books are food for my soul! Pull up a beach chair and stick your toes in the sand as the Jersey surf rolls in and out, now open your book and let your imagination take you away.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Book Club by Jaime Boust (Author Interview / Book Review)

In association with Chick Lit Plus Blog Tours, Jersey Girl Book Reviews is pleased to host the virtual book tour event for Book Club by Author Jaime Boust!

Author Interview

Welcome to Jersey Girl Book Reviews, Jaime!

Before we get to the interview, can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself.

You betcha. I write everything from literotica to anonymously submitted business plans to my favorite failing local retailers. There's a popcorn store in Oakland, California that just closed because they failed to act fast on the recommendations I slipped into their mailbox. The world needs me! My husband calls me The Meddler.

If you were to make one of those push-pin maps of my life, you'd stick the first pin at Fresno, California, jump down to San Diego near the beach, over the pond to London, and then back to the hills of San Francisco. These days I'm dodging traffic in Los Angeles because my husband decided to take up a new career in theme park design. The kids seem to like this better than his old job. That's right, Disneyland is now considered research.

Many things have been said of me: idea machine, portmanteau enthusiast, cutthroat croquet player, national champion cheerleader, world's spiciest cook. I'm hoping to add favorite author to the list.

How long have you been a writer?

I've enjoyed writing all my life, but I've devoted the last seven years to writing full time.

Do you have a day job, or is being an author your career?

I write all day, five days a week, but my husband says it's time to start earning money. Please help me avoid getting a job by telling all your friends about BookClub! I'm unfit for the outside world.

What inspired you to become a writer? Describe your journey as a writer.

When I turned 30, I decided it was time to stop working towards other people's goals and start working towards my own. Writing has always been a part of my life, but this was the point I threw myself full force into making it a career. Book Club is very much about this idea of self-actualization.

Please give a brief description/storyline about Book Club.

Book Club is about a group of women who pay a lot of lip service to their dreams but never do anything about them, until a mysterious new member arrives and pushes everyone into action.

What was the inspiration for this story?

The original inspiration was Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I loved the idea of a group of women taking extreme measures to feel alive.

How did it feel to have your first book published?

Overdue, and bubbling with possibility.

Do you write books for a specific genre?

I write stories for awesome women about awesome women.

What genres are your favorite(s)? What are some of your favorite books that you have read and why?

My reading tastes trend toward the literary, which I hope is reflected in my own writing. Right now I'm reading The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner and drinking in every word. I also recently reread Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and man was she a badass.

Do you have a special spot/area where you like to do your writing?

I write at the kitchen table, where the cat hops up and begins his slow attempt to sprawl across my keyboard.

How do you come up with the ideas that become the storyline for your books?

Ideas leap into my consciousness from all directions: conversations, waking thoughts, funny things I overhear, and of course the inspiration that comes from meeting interesting people.

When you write, do you adhere to a strict work schedule, or do you work whenever the inspiration strikes?

I write all day, every day, Monday through Friday.

What aspects of storytelling do you like the best, and what aspects do you struggle with the most?

There's nothing quite like starting a new story you're itching to tell save for the remarkable feeling of finishing something. It's the middle that's sort of a butthead. Wait, can I say butthead?

What are your favorite things to do when you are not writing?

Reading, of course, and playing with my kids. They're little (3 and 5) and have the most literal yet perverse perspectives on the world.

What is/was the best piece of writing advice that you have received?

Shut up and write.

What is the most gratifying thing you feel or get as a writer?

The buoying joy of creation.

How do you usually communicate with your readers/fans?

Well, I'm just starting out with that part of things. Please drop me a line from my website: www.jaimeboust.com and I pinky swear I'll write you back. I'm also looking forward to starting a blog.

Is there anything in your book based on real life experiences or are they purely all from your imagination?

Oh sure, there's tons from my own life, but it would be against my better judgment to disclose those details for fear of prosecution.

What authors have been your inspiration or influenced you to become a writer?

Anyone who is earning a living by pulling stories from their minds, writing them down, and sharing them with the world is an inspiration in my book. Ha, get it? My book.

What is your definition of success as a writer?

Having readers love my writing and being able to pay the bills.

Are you currently writing a new book? If yes, would you care to share a bit of it with us?

Why yes! I'm writing a steamy serial called Conquest by Steam Bijou, which is actually excerpted in Book Club. It would be my pleasure to provide the link: www.steambijou.com.

Jaime, thank you for visiting Jersey Girl Book Reviews, and sharing a bit about yourself and your writing career with us!

About The Author

Jaime Boust is a writer whose work ranges from literotica to anonymously submitted business plans to her favorite failing local retailers. Her fiction includes Book Club, Conquest by her alter ego Steam Bijou, and the forthcoming serial Night Life--a series about a thirty-something mother who, disillusioned by the monotony of motherhood, starts a high-end prostitution ring.

Jaime received her formal education at the University of California at San Diego and her informal education on the streets of London, the hills of San Francisco, the sewers of Paris, and the suburban wilds of Oakland. These days you'll find her dodging traffic in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids. Many things have been said of her: idea machine, portmanteau enthusiast, cutthroat croquet player, national champion cheerleader, world's spiciest cook. Believe them all.

Book Club is a time to drink wine, to live vicariously through erotic fiction, and pay lip service to one’s life goals. The club's founder wants to be a writer but can’t find her story. Billie is the virgin mailwoman who doesn’t know if she’s gay or straight. Ashleigh is the beautiful housewife who can’t get pregnant by her philandering husband, and Marissa is the high-powered executive who has sacrificed her own family for a stressful job that makes her miserable.

They meet once a month, updating their dream boards guided by the self-help book du jour, but nothing ever changes. Until Marissa’s mysterious sister arrives and shakes the women into action.

What will it take to make their dreams a reality? The disappearance of People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, mass abandonment of smart phones, Korean nacho dogs, and some good old fashioned sex.

Book Club is smart, sexy, and endlessly entertaining. A delicious, thought-provoking romp from start to finish. Make it your top book club pick for 2015!

Book Excerpt:

We sat in her leather-bound great room spreading herbed chèvre onto discs of watermelon radishes, feeling proud of ourselves for having selected a classic of English Literature that still managed to incorporate a great deal of sex. It was gratifying to be able to toss out sophisticated literary references to our lesser-read friends, and we were happy for Connie (Lady Chatterley) to have finally started living in her body once again.

But we were distracted in our discussion by a new presence, who sprawled herself on Marissa’s ice plant velvet chaise smoking marijuana from a vaporizer and listening to every word we spoke in silence. This was Hope, Marissa’s younger sister, whose life was often recounted by Marissa in a half-proud, half-cynical way. She was the baby, the black sheep, the fuck-up, the zeitgeist of modernity. She wrote poetry on the sidewalk and made experimental films in which she appeared naked and spray-painted silver. She was always in Berlin for a month or partying with Jay Z, busy designing a pop-up gallery, or eating at an underground restaurant. She was sleeping with a dancer, a doorman, and a Habsburg Prince.

Hope had arrived the day before in a mist of unanswered questions filtered from Marissa through Ashleigh to me. Something had happened in New York to make her come here, and her presence in the room was like an ornately filigreed blade. Any genetic kinks that revealed themselves through Marissa’s angular face had been worked out by the time Hope came along. Her looks were striking in the way a crow’s feathers shine blue in the sun. She wore a long curtain of black hair, dyed darker than her natural brunette, which cast her urban untanned skin as a mask of porcelain with piercing cobalt eyes. Something in her presence startled me, but whether it was her face or her scrutinizing silence I wasn’t sure. All the time I stood reading from the selected passage, and all the time afterward that I sat sipping Pinot Gris, professing my respect for Lady Chatterley for taking charge of her life, Hope watched me, watched all of us, as she drew luxurious vapor breaths from her slim gold apparatus.

She was thirty-six, one year younger than I was.

My Book Review:
Author Jaime Boust's Book Club is a thoroughly entertaining novel that follows the trials and tribulations of five women who belong to a book club, and how one of the member's sister arrives and challenges the women to act upon and make their dream board items a reality.

This exciting and fast-paced story easily draws the reader into following the book club members as they deal with personal issues; engage in drinking wine, reading erotica, and self-help books; and discuss popular topics like celebrities, sex, and popular culture issues.

These five women are fun to follow, they are a diverse group with very different personalities and life experiences that easily keeps the reader engaged, and their antics will keep the reader in stitches. I loved how each of the women were challenged to embark on a journey of self-discovery, it had a nice balance of humor and poignancy, and it was fun to watch the women grow and find their true selves.Book Club is fun, adventurous, and humorous story that will make you want to join a local book club!

About Me

Hi, my name is Kathleen! I am a Jersey Girl born and bred with the sand and surf between my toes! I am a State Farm Insurance Representative. I love to read books and share my passion with other readers. I have 2 book review blog sites: Jersey Girl Book Reviews that features all genres except for erotica, which are located at Jersey Girl Sizzling Book Reviews, and a book promotions blog called Jersey Pines Book Promotions. I am willing to review your books, host guest blogs, blog tours, and giveaways. Please contact me if interested.